Fraud Friday: A 70-year-old tax collector


A 70-year-old tax collector in Pennsylvania was sentenced to one year in prison for filing false returns that understated her income. She started underreporting in 2014 and gradually increased the unreported amount each year until her actual income was six times higher than what she reported to the IRS in 2018. She used the funds to buy a mobile home at the Jersey Shore, fund home renovations, and pay for a family vacation to Hawaii. The tax collector and her family argued for her to serve the sentence at home so she could begin paying restitution to the IRS, but the judge was unmoved considering the seriousness of the crime and the fact that she was an elected county tax collector who used her position to not pay her own taxes. (https://www.inquirer.com/news/rosezanna-czwalina-ridley-township-false-income-tax-sentence-20220518.html)